ABSTRACT
By the end of the reign of Süleyman in 1566, the Ottomans had created an ideology which not only justified the Ottoman sultan’s rule in his own territories, but also bestowed on him a claim to universal sovereignty. These claims, and the beliefs which supported them, had developed between the late fourteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries, becoming ever more grandiose with the continuing growth in Ottoman power. They did not derive from a single source or a single coherent set of ideas, but rather from an accretion and coalescence of myths and ideals, each of which had emerged at a different time to answer a particular political need or to appeal to a particular group of the sultan’s subjects. However, all the elements in this complex ideology served the single purpose of justifying the rule of the Ottoman dynasty. This complexity to serve such a simple end perhaps reflects the political nature of the Ottoman empire. Its sheer size and ethnic, religious and geographical diversity meant that the principle of its unity was extremely simple: loyalty to the Ottoman dynasty. This loyalty is what Ottoman ideology sought to promote. The Ottoman dynasty, like a large percentage of its subjects, was Muslim and Turkish and it was from within Muslim and Turkish tradition, both popular and learned, that it derived its claims to rulership and sovereignty. 1
